Something gentle woke me early;
You were beside me, warm, breathing easy,
With that young girl look that sleep leaves softly on your face.
I touched you and you sighed like you do and
Snuggled closer to me
I sighed then too and raised my face.  
That’s when I noticed a glow coming in the window.
I got out of bed and went to the deck where
I saw the sun announce
The morning with a fire burning in the sky and
Dancing on the lake behind our home.  
The world was only shadows then,
Before it lit the day.

I looked back and saw the dawn on you as if
You were the source.
I thought of all the dawns I thought I’d seen,
And I knew that until this moment I had never seen a thing.

I am one who always watched the sunset,
The end of the day is where I lived,
I never saw the sun on the rise
Or knew what the morning had to give.

I missed all those years so full of sunrise
Left there behind unenjoyed
I knew the dawn as just a noun,
A word I never understood.

But then I woke one morning to the sunrise
And saw all the colors of the dawn.
That was the day you came into my life
And made it a joy to carry on

The sacred, elemental fire of the sunrise
Burned hot between us from the start
The sun rises high every day for me now
Where the dawn is always in my heart

Breathe with me as we
Lay together.  
Feel my heart's union with yours
And let this night go on forever
By repeating it into
Eternity.

The world was a tapestry hung on simple pillars once.
They taught us how to see our place in it, what to do, how to act
Who we were supposed to be.

But we never saw behind the curtain
Where things never considered were boiling
And caught us one by one to change what was promised.

Who was prepared not to be loved, or for failure
Or to survive the death of traditions and the
Acceptance of something once taboo to be the norm?

The tapestry has changed and all the nostalgia in
My heart can’t restore what it was.  
I can’t embrace it, but I have a tool to cope.

“Go with the flow, Jimmy,”
My mother said,
“Go with the flow”.

Home, sick with the winter that
Is trying to **** me being held at bay
By a fire in the corner hearth.

I’m safe as long as it lasts,
So I stir it, and feed it, and draw
Out the fire’s life as if it were my own.

But there is only so much one can do.
In the end they say even the stars will burn out
Overcome by the cold, endless dark.

But that means nothing now, there is only
This fire I have been given to guard
And appreciate.

I wish I had always been so wise.

Clouds
fall down,
swallowed
snowflakes,
melting inside
the mouth
of the mountain.
I am lost
in the abyss
of the hole
you left me with.
heart-broken.

Mirrored silver
tag me blue
reflective sky
widgeon, merganser
blithely sail
broken ripples
foretelling
storm

raucous
cawing crows
assemble
anxious ducks
explode airborne
duly warned
silent drone
fateful wraith

Eagle
glides over
the settling
surface
razor eyes
seeking
the meek
the weak

fleeing flock
coalesces
white bellies
exposed to the sun
banking hard
return to serenity
certain death
deferred

in nature
alliances are clear

predator

prey
vigilantly
warning
relentlessly
defending

Shrieking
crow-beleaguered
Eagle
retreats
no match
for those
united
against him